A fateful night in the city that never sleeps

Few authors are as synonymous with New York City as Pete Hamill, so it is fitting that the Brooklyn-bred darling of The Post and The Daily News returns with a story as frenetic, complicated, harrowing and alive as his beloved town.We begin Tabloid City at midnight with Sam Briscoe, an aging editor of a daily newspaper, putting the next day’s afternoon edition to bed. But the night is far...

He loves New York

New York City is never merely a setting in Pete Hamill's novels. It is a pulsing, protean entity, both event and catalyst, and he reserves for it the reverence of a man describing a lifetime love affair. It was the backdrop, most notably, for the studiously ambitious Forever, and for his wondrous memoir, A Drinking Life. So it is no surprise that Hamill's city, specifically the area on the...

Christmas on location

Just in time for the holidays, a treasure of a short novel by Pete Hamill is being reissued. The Gift was first published in 1973, and the story of a father and son struggling to find common ground is just as poignant in 2005. Pete is on leave from the Navy during the Korean War, and he returns to New York City for Christmas with its promise of steam and warmth, a girl's brown hair, the smell...

Book Clubs Column by Julie Hale

Hamill's 16th book is a one-of-a-kind tribute to New York. Through a mysterious twist of fate, Irishman Cormac O'Connor is promised eternal life and youth, but naturally, there's a catch: in order for the magic to take effect, he must never leave Manhattan. On a quest to find his father's killer, O'Connor arrives on the island in 1740. Watching New York develop from a small outpost in the...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

News Is a Verb: Journalism at the End of the Twentieth Century, part of the Library of Contemporary Thought series, is a powerful audio essay by Pete Hamill, a newspaperman who is passionate about his craft and its affect on our lives. Hamill, not alone, sees the last ten months or so as a nadir in American journalism. He's deeply troubled that so many papers have abandoned their...